We interviewed a "vintage seller" at the Artists & Fleas market in Williamsburg, Brooklyn about how he got his merchandise.

He was selling vintage Lacoste and Polo sweaters for $45.

"Basically I just go to Texas once a year, go to the Goodwill store in a nice suburban neighborhood, and load up on stuff that just costs a few dollars," he said. "Then I come here and people go crazy for it."

wait until brooklyn hipsters find out they are wearing the rejected garments of texan suburbanites.

Makh:Wait until they find out about the thrift stores? They are having a massive sale with those great prices.

No, no, no. Thrift stores are for the common, the mainstream, and the terminally unhip. The cool and ironic individual buys their used clothing at a massive markup at a cool and ironic place with a cool and ironic name like Artists and Fleas. It is also cool and ironic to wear sweaters discarded by Texan suburbanites who obviously are not worthy of this cool and ironic clothing, else they wouldn't have sold them at a yard sale.

I don't generally shop at Urban Outfitters but I'm okay with this. I hate taking the time in Goodwill/Salvation Army/Random thrift store and sorting through all the clothes attempting to find something I like, in my size, and also in wearable condition. I want to walk in, maybe do quick browse (15 minutes, tops) and leave. Preferably without needing to try on clothes as well. I hate clothes shopping.

vintage stores are nothing new. they charge about 10x as much as thrift stores, they generally pay for used clothes and dont just take whatever you have. there was a farging episode of seinfeld about this, thats how not news this is

Abox:Hipster claiming there's no such thing as hipsters in 3...2...1...

Let me head off that bullshiat by giving an easy definition of a hipster that does not include mention of specific items of clothing or objects they carry:

A hipster can be defined by liking things for ironic purposes only. Value in their eyes is determined by liking things because they are "lame" or "square" or "uncool." Obscurity helps. Step 2 is defining an ingroup of other people that like things in an ironic fashion. Not to embrace kitsch or retro on its own merits. Thus the circle is squared.

Fano:Abox: Hipster claiming there's no such thing as hipsters in 3...2...1...

Let me head off that bullshiat by giving an easy definition of a hipster that does not include mention of specific items of clothing or objects they carry:

A hipster can be defined by liking things for ironic purposes only. Value in their eyes is determined by liking things because they are "lame" or "square" or "uncool." Obscurity helps. Step 2 is defining an ingroup of other people that like things in an ironic fashion. Not to embrace kitsch or retro on its own merits. Thus the circle is squared.

But they have to like the SAME things, right? Or are the hipster friends expected to each have mutually-exclusive interests?

It IS WORTH $50..... they went out and picked through all kinds of shiat to find it. People who think they should be able to purchase things at wholesale bother me. There is a cost associated with finding the stuff and shipping it, etc...

That being said, if you are such a loser that you can't go to ACTUAL yardsales to by your shiat and instead hit UO because you have no actual knowledge of style....... well then, you are a douchebag.

skylabdown:It IS WORTH $50..... they went out and picked through all kinds of shiat to find it. People who think they should be able to purchase things at wholesale bother me. There is a cost associated with finding the stuff and shipping it, etc...

That being said, if you are such a loser that you can't go to ACTUAL yardsales to by your shiat and instead hit UO because you have no actual knowledge of style....... well then, you are a douchebag.

JohnAnnArbor:Fano: Abox: Hipster claiming there's no such thing as hipsters in 3...2...1...

Let me head off that bullshiat by giving an easy definition of a hipster that does not include mention of specific items of clothing or objects they carry:

A hipster can be defined by liking things for ironic purposes only. Value in their eyes is determined by liking things because they are "lame" or "square" or "uncool." Obscurity helps. Step 2 is defining an ingroup of other people that like things in an ironic fashion. Not to embrace kitsch or retro on its own merits. Thus the circle is squared.

But they have to like the SAME things, right? Or are the hipster friends expected to each have mutually-exclusive interests?

/We need anthropologists to study this question.

Hipster is like twins, it usually skips a generation.

Person 1 likes a new band and is a hipster because the new band is obscure. You probably haven't heard of them.Person 2 starts liking the band, is a poser. Person 1 liked that band before they sold out.Person 3 starts liking the band and is a hipster because they are ironically liking a band that only posers like.

And hipsters shell out the money regardless. It's no different in Florida, I know someone who buys jeans from Bealls Outlet, fades them and adds a few decorations from a kit she bought from walmart. I don't recall the name of the kit she buys, but she adds some fake plastic jewels to the clothes and simply re-sells them on ebay, and she turns out a few shirts/pants every week.

/funniest thing i've seen was she took a cheap $10 pair of jeans, and using the jewels she glued "ABBA" on the butt of it, they sold on ebay for $131 plus shipping.//I would laugh, but frankly I'd rather punch the person who bought jeans for that much

I had a read about something called "The New Sincerity" which is apparently the philosophical wellspring of the hipster movement. My head nearly exploded wide open from the pretension of it all. I wish I could pimp that sort of horse shiat with a straight face so that I could separate the insecure from their money.

Anyone ever been to downtown Santa Cruz? Every damn store is a vintage retailer yet there is a farkin Urban Outiftters in the center of it all. I can't say that the vintage retailers are any less overpriced, though.

RogermcAllen:JohnAnnArbor: Fano: Abox: Hipster claiming there's no such thing as hipsters in 3...2...1...

Let me head off that bullshiat by giving an easy definition of a hipster that does not include mention of specific items of clothing or objects they carry:

A hipster can be defined by liking things for ironic purposes only. Value in their eyes is determined by liking things because they are "lame" or "square" or "uncool." Obscurity helps. Step 2 is defining an ingroup of other people that like things in an ironic fashion. Not to embrace kitsch or retro on its own merits. Thus the circle is squared.

But they have to like the SAME things, right? Or are the hipster friends expected to each have mutually-exclusive interests?

/We need anthropologists to study this question.

Hipster is like twins, it usually skips a generation.

Person 1 likes a new band and is a hipster because the new band is obscure. You probably haven't heard of them.Person 2 starts liking the band, is a poser. Person 1 liked that band before they sold out.Person 3 starts liking the band and is a hipster because they are ironically liking a band that only posers like.

I was about to say that the ingroup also likes said uncool things, but you posted a complicating wrinkle that explains why the concept of being a hipster is inherently unstable and indefensible as an ethos. I was presenting a Ptolemaic version of Hipsterdom, where the Hipsters formed into interlocking orbits based on their shared likes. I realize I stand corrected that one of the most pernicious sins of Hipsters is as you describe, eating their own. My central premise still holds up though I didn't consider the consequences of multiple iterations of enjoying things ironically. My view is now going fractal.

In the late '70s I worked at a tourist restaurant on the beach islands in Tampa/St. Pete, Florida. I drew charcoal portraits of folks waiting for tables during season. I rented space from dealers who traveled the US, buying turquoise and silver jewelry in the Southwest and selling it to the Yankee Jews, affluent Midwesterners and Canadians in FL. They then bought fancy shells and sold them to landlocked folks in New Mex and AZ. Cycle of desire. Portraits and porno sell anywhere, thank christ.

spamdog:I had a read about something called "The New Sincerity" which is apparently the philosophical wellspring of the hipster movement. My head nearly exploded wide open from the pretension of it all. I wish I could pimp that sort of horse shiat with a straight face so that I could separate the insecure from their money.

Critic Jim Collins introduced the concept of "new sincerity" to film criticism in his 1993 essay entitled "Genericity in the 90s: Eclectic Irony and the New Sincerity." In this essay he contrasts films that treat genre conventions with "eclectic irony" and those that treat them seriously, with "new sincerity." Collins describes

the 'new sincerity' of films like Field of Dreams (1989), Dances With Wolves (1990), and Hook (1991), all of which depend not on hybridization, but on an "ethnographic" rewriting of the classic genre film that serves as their inspiration, all attempting, using one strategy or another, to recover a lost "purity," which apparently pre-existed even the Golden Age of film genre.

Other critics have suggested "new sincerity" as a descriptive term for work by American filmmakers such as Wes Anderson, P. T. Anderson, Todd Louiso, Sofia Coppola, and Charlie Kaufman, Zach Braff, and Jared Hess,[18] and filmmakers from other countries such as Michel Gondry, Lars von Trier, the Dogme 95 movement, Aki Kaurismäki, and Pedro Almodóvar. The "aesthetics of new sincerity" have also been connected to other art forms including "reality television, Internet blogs, diary style 'chicklit' literature, [and] personal videos on You-Tube. . . . "